Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572) is among the most influential, and remarkable, Kabbalists of all time. Called the Ari, or Holy Lion (the name is an acronym for Elohi Rabbi Isaac, or the Godly Rabbi Isaac), he is most associated with the renaissance of Kabbalah that occurred in Tsfat, a small town in northern Israel that is to this day a center of Jewish mysticism. Yet the Ari only lived in Tsfat for two years, and most…
The historical Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai was a Talmudic sage in the generation of the Tannaim, the senior rabbis of the Talmud. He was alive during the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans (132-135 C.E.), and was one of the many rabbis who resisted the Romans during that period. His teacher, Rabbi Akiva, was martyred by the Romans, as was the rabbi who bestowed ordination upon him, Rabbi Yehuda ben Bava. Bar Yochai himself, it…
The Zohar is the masterpiece of Kabbalah, a vast compendium of myth, Biblical interpretation, mystical narrative, and cosmology. It is unlike any other book I know, dense with allusions and ripe for free interpretation. According to Kabbalistic tradition, the legendary Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is the author and protagonist of the Zohar, the masterpiece of Kabbalah. As such, he is revered among traditional Jews as the kabbalist par excellence, the incarnation of a holy soul…
Kabbalah is not really a system. It evolved, over centuries, from many strands of oral tradition, and, as a result, often has multiple opinions on core issues. Questions of God’s essence and manifestation, of the origin of evil, of what happens to the soul after death — in truly systematic theologies, these sorts of issues are debated, and, usually, one view wins out over others. Within the Kabbalistic literature, multiple answers to these questions, and…
The notion that the universe is comprised of four “worlds,” or levels of reality, first occurs in 13th century Kabbalistic texts, but became more popular in Lurianic Kabbalah and then in 19th century Hasidism, and is especially resonant today. For contemporary seekers, it reflects the understanding that existence is multi-layered, and in a state of dynamic flux. Classically, these “worlds” represent stages between undifferentiation and differentiation, not unlike the neoplatonic levels of emanation. In Hasidism,…
There is no more fundamental binarism than yesh and ayin, something and nothing. Yesh means, simply, everything that there is. Ayin is Nothing. God is both. To approach the Divine in yesh, we yearn for God’s love. Like the Sufis, we pine for the Friend; like the Hindus, we envision God in manifold mythologies and forms. To approach the Divine in ayin, we learn to allow thought to cease, and simply open ourselves to the…
The problem of evil may be religion’s fundamental challenge. The presence of suffering — which in mythical, theological and philosophical discourse becomes aligned with evil — is arguably the reason why religion exists in the first place. Possibly even reflective thought at all; Franz Rosenzweig, the great Jewish philosopher of the last century, argues that philosophy is born from the reality of death, and from the fear of death. Coming to know the finitude of…
Malchut One of the deepest teachings of Kabbalah is also one of the simplest: that the world is not what it seems. As we have already explored, that which we experience as the world is actually a veil for the Infinite Oneness, the only thing that really is. Refracted through the various lenses of the sefirot, this “light” is the true structure of what is happening right now. But what about what seems to be happening right now?…
Keter, Hochmah, Binah The “top” triad of the sefirot is, in a sense, the mind of God. Keter, meaning “crown,” is transrational, and beyond all cognition. We can say almost nothing about it, except that it is the first stirring of what we would call “will” within the Infinite. In the world of keter, nothing exists: not “God,” not the universe, only the Ein Sof, with the most subtle intention to expand into manifestation. (It’s…
The Infinite light is refracted, as it were, through these colored lenses of the sefirot. Here is Cordovero on this subject, from Pardes Rimmonim. In the beginning, Ein Sof emanated ten sefirot, which are of its essence, united with it. It and they are entirely one. There is no change or division in the emanator that would justify saying it is divided into parts in these various sefirot. Division and change do not apply to it,…